actuallyawolf | Pumpkin Hollow Inbox

Ylva arrives with a flap of broad crow's wings; she spirals in the air for a moment until she spies Helena, and then flies down, transforming as she lands.

"Hi!" She is so excited. She take a breath. "Ready to go?"

"Yes, right away!"

Wherever Ylva starts, she's off with her, keeping pace with her feet and the light taps of her cane.

"So, I should explain a little more than I did at the Dance. With my cane and with sound, I can know what's near me, but at a further distance, I only have a very slight idea. And sometimes there are things to touch along the way, but then there isn't, or I miss them. And here, there's actually nature again. I want to experience it, but if I can't discern where I am with relative certainty, that's just getting lost on purpose."

"How far is 'further'?" Ylva asks, seriously. This seems to be a very important detail, to her. If she's going to help, she needs to know. "The range of your cane, or what? How much detail?"

It seems likely that Helena's situation is not the same as Erin's, after all.

"It might be easier if you start walking away from me - I'll tell you when you start to become unclear."

It's hard for her to measure accurate distances like this - that's one thing that she can never make up for, beyond saying something is here or there.

"Okay, I will."

Ylva starts backing away sideways, watching Helena closely. "How's this? Keep going?"

"A little more....a little more....about there."

It's a decent distance away, but certainly not enough to be navigating the wilderness or anything like it alone.

"Hm, okay."

Ylva frowns to herself while she thinks about this. "That's pretty good, though. This, plus sound, plus feel, plus -- well." Maybe she shouldn't get ahead of herself. She gives herself a shake.

"You want to start with walking out to where the farms are? And the woods where I live are on the other side of that anyway."

She nods.

"I know this road somewhat too - at least, how to get out to where Max lives, and where Darcy lives with everyone else. It just usually takes some time unless I'm with someone."

"Maybe we can get you better at it."

That seems like a reasonable goal to her, anyway.

"Okay. So. Tell me what you hear, while we walk." Ylva fully expects to get a pretty comprehensive answer from Helena. "The road is going to start curving up ahead here, too."

She nods at the warning for the road, and tries to figure out how to put everything she hears into words. With things being so felt for so long, it's...oh, more than once she wishes she could just touch someone and convey it all, but the duty of a poet is to give language to the inexpressible.

"I hear me, to start with. I hear my own footsteps, which tell me what I'm walking over, and I hear my cane, and from it I know what is around me, what might be coming up, when the sound comes back to me in a different shape. I hear you, and your footsteps - I can tell how fast you're going from them, how your stride might be, and the small things that people don't usually think make noise. Right now, there's the town, and I can tell the three different families we'll pass by - not from their voices, but because of how they walk, and how they open and close a door. One of the stones in the walk up ahead is loose enough to grind when you step over it, right next to the wall, and that's usually when I know I'm going in the right direction, especially since the scent of the sea isn't as strong as the other way. "

She continues on, never breaking her stride.

"In the far distance, there's the forge, and there's someone a ways ahead who just got wind chimes, because I hear them when the breeze goes by, like right now. There's a rhythm to when people talk on the streets - it's louder when it's warmer - but it's not strangely quiet, so that tells me it's a normal day. Kind of akin to how waves come in and out of the shore. And someone's just come out of the place two buildings ahead, because their door just opened, so I know I should move a little to the left in case they come this way."

Which she does, making unconscious way for the person who's come out and hurrying by.

"I can keep going on, but that's just a fragment. Being here, I have to let some of it fade into the background and pick and choose what to focus on, or else I'd give myself a headache. When I'm out of the town, then I can expand that focus." A pause. "Sometimes people walk more deliberately so I can hear them better. I don't tell them I know."

Ylva listens seriously, with a sober silence. It's much more detailed than she would have expected, and that's something to admire.

"You're really good at this," she says, seriously. "Does it bother you when people walk deliberately? Or is that polite?"

Why yes, she is asking for her own knowledge as well as for general interest.

"It doesn't bother me at all. When people take care to make sounds - be it through their walk or by doing something else - it makes me feel as though I am acknowledged. I think I'd only be upset if they made a big deal out of it."

Deliberately making her seem other, instead of folding her into their lives.

She hums, thoughtful.

"I... struggle with city sounds, sometimes. There's so many of them, and they're so loud. The woods can have just as many sounds, but they're softer. It's not as overwhelming. So you've got me beat there."

Ylva is absolutely certain this is going to work.

"Yet yours require patience to hear and to understand. I think we're equal, just in different ways." A little pause. "If you give me some time, I could probably work out how to explain what I do so I don't become overwhelmed by it all. We can help each other."

Just because it's long held habit doesn't mean she can't try and pull it apart to understand how to teach it. If she can teach people Braille, she can certainly try and pass along the skills that have made her life actually livable.

"That would be really useful," Ylva says, honestly a little surprised by the suggestion but no less glad for it. "I try, but... honestly, I think sometimes being on the stupid boat for so long made things a lot harder than it was before."

So many long months cooped up, always inside, with no weather, no seasons, no life, just a watery wasteland around them.

"No, I understand. There was sound, but...so much of it was fake. Or absent. And always that sound of the boat in the back, that hum, sort of like..."

She does her best impression of the low, rumbling hum that had been constant, some imitation of how a boat should sound but never varying. Day and night, in the background.

"It messed with how things should be. You know how much is absent, but when it's back, it comes all at once, not gradually. It gave me such a headache, until I remembered how to filter it."

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